Philip Norman QUOTES

2 " wherever Haley’s voice rang out with “One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock RAHK…” the gritty drama on the screen was totally eclipsed by mayhem among the audience. Boys and girls alike went literally berserk, shrieking like banshees, tearing at the fabric of their seats, lurching out to dance in the aisles or engage in mass brawls that required dozens of police to contain them. "

― Philip Norman , John Lennon: The Life

4 " fatal stabbing of a young black spectator while Mick Jagger vainly appealed to the crowd to “cool out” and love one another. Good-bye Sixties; welcome to the future. "

― Philip Norman , Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation

6 " Alf then told John he must choose between going with Mummy or staying with Daddy. If you want to tear a small child in two, there is no better way. "

― Philip Norman , John Lennon: The Life

8 " Imagine six apartments It isn’t hard to do. One is full of fur coats The other’s full of shoes. "

― Philip Norman , Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation

10 " Recorded at the same time, but not destined for release until 19 months later, was John’s ‘Across the Universe’, melding the sweetest and loneliest of his lyrics (‘Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box…’) with the mantra he’d soon be chanting in the Himalayas. He wanted a female chorus totally without artifice so, rather than professional backing singers, it was decided to use two of the fans permanently on watch outside Abbey Road studios. Paul was deputed to fetch them, and picked out a pair he recognised from his own front gate in Cavendish Avenue. The girls’ awestruck voices created just the right effect for ‘Across the "

― Philip Norman , Paul McCartney: The Life

12 " Paul then asked if being managed by Brian would make any difference to the music they played. Brian assured him that it would not. There was a second uneasy silence, again broken by John. “Right then, Brian,” he said. “Manage "

― Philip Norman , Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation

14 " have fired more people than any comparable employer unit in the world. They make Lord Beaverbrook look like Jesus. "

― Philip Norman , Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation

16 " He had always loved to draw and paint, begging to be bought pencils, paint boxes, and paper rather than toys, spending hours wrapped up in worlds of his own creation. "

― Philip Norman , John Lennon: The Life

18 " The pièce de résistance, put into the can on the very first day, owed its inspiration to Little Richard, who would whip audiences to further frenzy between numbers by self-congratulatory cries of “Well...all right!” Buddy turned the phrase into a gentle love song infused with all his special quality of patience and optimism and his developing ability to make personal sentiments into universal ones. “Well, All Right” is a riposte to all the criticism and condescension that teenagers faced from their elders in the rock 'n' roll fifties—and have in every decade since. The setting is as adventurously simple as that of “Everyday”: Buddy plays flamenco-accented acoustic guitar, with only a plashing cymbal for company. The mood is not one of youthful anger and defiance but of maturity before its time: calm, stoical, steadfast in affirming its “dreams and wishes.” The intimacy in the voice could equally be that of lover or elder brother. Girl or boy, you can imagine you and he are alone together, gazing into the fire and imagining a bright future when the young will “live and love with all our might,” which could almost be a prophecy of the sixties' hippie culture. "

― Philip Norman , Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly

20 " Late one night, as he walked back alone from a Kasuals gig, a truck screeched to a halt beside him and a group of drunken white youths jumped out, screaming racial abuse. Jimmy took off across a cornfield, easily outdistanced his would-be attackers and then, rather like Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, lay doggo on top of Betty-Jean, until they gave up and drove away. "

― Philip Norman , Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix